Please Please Me
by Greenball
Summary: AU: Matt and Mello work in the same building and have become good friends over the past few years. But now Mello has decided that Matt needs to broaden his horizons as far as social contacts go. MxM.  Title a song by The Beatles.
1. Chapter 1

"It's okay, Matt. I'll help you find the perfect person."

Matt sighed and gave Mello an exasperated look. He really, really, really, did not want to do this. He was perfectly fine with being a virgin. He had his hentai porn and his fanfiction and his morning showers, and he was perfectly content.

"Mel, I appreciate the effort, but seriously, dude... This just isn't me."

They were sitting at the bar of a posh, downtown club, with the usual neon lights, swarms of intoxicated people and a floor-shattering techno beat. The place was called Inferno and Matt whole-heartedly agreed with who ever had come up with the name. This just wasn't him, as he kept saying to Mello. Sure, the music was right up his ally, but people, large masses of sweaty, dancing people in particular, were not. The very thought of infiltrating said mass and trying to pick someone up for the night made him nauseous. He couldn't do it. He was too scared. Too shy. Too introverted. Too inexperienced.

But Mello was having none of it.

"Come on, Matty! Look at these people. There's bound to be someone there you might imagine yourself having sex with... Lots of girls, and guys, of all types and sizes. Where do you sit on that one, anyway? I've never heard you talk about anyone like that, now that I think about it..." He leaned forward to stare into Matt's eyes in a way that Matt had initially hated all those years ago, but had had to accept as one his friend's peculiar traits that refused to go away.

"Well..." He wasn't sure what to answer. He didn't think Mello would be happy if he said he didn't find real people attractive compared to his game or anime characters, male or female. "I'm not sure," he finally muttered.

Mello frowned and pursed his lips. "Then you're bi. If you preferred just one sex, you would know by now." He leaned back away from Matt and absent-mindedly fixed his hair. Mello really was kind of feminine, Matt thought. His hair was long and he was rather slender in built. Although no one really mistook him for a girl. There was just something in his gait and the way he moved in general that screamed alpha-male. He had the air of a guy you did not want to run into in dark alleys and such.

Really, it was rather weird that he had chosen to befriend Matt, of all people. Sure, they worked in the same building, but other than that they didn't have much in common. Matt was quiet and asocial, Mello loud and loved to interact with people. Matt liked computers, Mello liked sex. Matt was a software engineer, Mello a PR consultant. They had only met in the proper sense of the word because the lift of the office building had broken down one evening while they were the only two people on it. They had had to wait for the maintenance to come and rescue them for three hours and during that time Mello had somehow managed to invite himself to Matt's for tea. And after that there had been no going back. Once Mello was in your life, there was no way of getting rid of him.

Not that Matt particularly wanted to. Except at moments like this, of course.

"Mello, I won't do this." He tried to sound sure. Like he meant business. He didn't say that he couldn't, but that he wouldn't do it. That it was a choice, his choice, to stay a virgin at the mature age of 25. That picking up a stranger in a club just to get rid of something he really didn't feel like losing was just not on the agenda. The only reason he'd agreed to join Mello here in the first place had been because Mello had guilt-tripped him into it by saying Matt had been avoiding him lately, which was true enough. The whole let's-get-of-your-virginity thing had not been brought up until they had already firmly been seated at the bar with more than one round of vodka shots in their systems.

Mello leaned forward, again. "Matt. Trust me, you'll thank me later. I really think you are not meant to stay a virgin."

Matt raised his eyebrows at that. Not meant..? If Mello brought God to this, he was so leaving. "Do explain."

Mello cleared his throat and adjusted his position on the chair. Despite the tight pants and the even tighter t-shirt, he somehow managed to look like a serious-minded student in a lecture hall, answering a professor's question. Matt knew Mello'd studied Market Economy only because he'd wanted to please his father. Anthropology was Mello's real passion. "Okay. Matt, how do you see your virginity?"

Matt blinked. "What?"

"I mean, do you see it as something you can either lose or preserve?" Mello was looking at him so intently that Matt couldn't focus on the question. Mello cocked his head. "Of course, those two are in the same category, in a manner of speaking. Virginity can be seen as a state, as something that is owned, rather than as the lack of something. Most Western people today see it as the latter, though. It's actually quite funny that it's almost become a phenomenon not unlike that in the so called shame societies, but in the exact opposite way. But of course it's never that simple. It'd be inane to say that all Western teenagers are just dying to get rid of their virginities at the earliest opportunity. Anyway, what is it to you?"

Matt sighed and shrugged uncertainly. "Neither, I guess. I don't think I'm owning... or lacking anything."

Mello nodded. "I see." He paused for a moment to bite his lip thoughtfully. "But you're not asexual, right? I mean, you have a sex drive, don't you?"

Matt fought the urge to blush. They didn't usually talk about things like this. "Uh, yeah. But there are asexuals, who, uh, have that drive, but just don't want to do anything with…" With real people? Would that sound creepy? "Who just, don't want to do anything", he finished. Thank the gods that there was too much noise for anyone to listen in on their conversation.

Mello hummed in agreement. "True. But I don't think you're really asexual. By nature, I mean. It's an environment thing. Your biological and social needs have been subdued by various distractions-"

"Oh, stop right there. If you're going to tell me computers have made me a nerdy loser, don't bother", Matt interrupted with a sigh.

Mello frowned. "No, I... Well, that's putting it very, very, simply. But the fact remains that you're part of a very modern phenomenon, being male. Most cultures before our time had a system where men were encouraged to gain experience with older women before marriage. In other words, they were systematically initiated into manhood. It's still that way in many cultures today, in Latin America, for example." He looked at Matt expectantly.

"Um, okay. I'm a wretched 21st century guy, who's been left to my own devices to gain sexual experience, and I've failed at it, got it."

Mello frowned. "Right. Well, not right. That's again... Not what I wanted to say. My point is that you-"

"That I really want to have sex and I just don't know it?" Matt filled in.

Mello opened his mouth to argue back, but seemed to think better of it. "Yeah, sure. And, Matty, I am one hundred percent sure that you will like it, if you just experience it the right way." He said it so enthusiastically that he accidentally hit over his glass and the contents splashed on Matt. "Oh, sorry!" He leaned over to pat Matt's shirt with a napkin, but Matt shooed him away.

"It's okay. I'll just have to go home and change," he said, not bothering to fake disappointment.

Mello's apologetic face quickly morphed into narrowed eyes. "Oh, no you won't. You're not leaving this place until we're done here." He placed his hand on Matt's shoulder. The grip was light enough, but Matt could feel see his muscled arm tensing, as if ready to restrain him by force. Mello had a tendency to rely on physical strength if talking didn't work, although it usually did.

Matt sighed. "Mel, I'm tired. Let's just go to my place for tea, yeah? You can talk all you want about the sociological significance of virginity, I promise. I might even try and argue back. Who knows, maybe you'll even convince me of something. But me losing my virginity to someone here tonight is just not happening." He could feel the effect of his words on Mello, whose grip on his shoulder loosened considerably.

"Fine. You win. I guess this was too sudden. My approach was wrong. Sorry," the man mumbled in one breath and stepped down onto the floor from his high stool. "Let's go then."


	2. Chapter 2

Ten minutes, a wind-swept ride on Mello's bike and four traffic lights later they were at Matt's apartment. It was a rather spacey but cozy place with three bedrooms and a lofty kitchen, which Matt rarely used, unless Mello was coming over to spend the night and Matt wanted to try and impress him with some home-made cooking. (Although so far all his attempts had ended in failure and he'd resorted to just ordering pizza.) The two spare bedrooms he used mainly for storing his computers and various other technical equipment he'd acquired over the years. Most of the stuff was dated and thus mostly useless, but Matt had always had difficulty throwing things away. Mello was, in fact, always teasing him about becoming "one of those pack rats, who obsessively hoard stuff from newspapers to tooth picks in their apartments until they have barely enough room for their own skinny arses".

And indeed, Mello's first question as he stepped inside was, "When was the last time you cleaned in here?"

Matt took a moment to think about it as he hung up both his and Mello's coats. "Um… Last week? I'm pretty sure it was last week." After all, the vacuum cleaner was still in the middle of the living-room. Usually Matt let it stay there for at least two weeks after using it before finally bothering to put it away. So, since it was still standing there, he must have cleaned the place up within the past fortnight.

"Oh, Matt," Mello only sighed and promptly made his way into the kitchen, the only flawlessly clean room in the apartment. Well, if you didn't count the layers of dust covering every horizontal surface, of course.

Matt stayed behind for a moment to take a critical look at his living-room. In all honesty, it actually didn't look that bad to him. Sure, all his games were mostly scattered on the floor between the TV and the two yellow bean bag chairs that he had instead of a sofa. And, yes, there were some – 'some' as in a few dozen – dirty dishes lying around… But other than that, it really wasn't that filthy. Well, okay, maybe the floor was a bit filthy. He had, after all, never actually washed them since he'd moved in some five years ago. But, who cared? It wasn't like he ate on the floor.

Nodding to himself in determination, Matt followed Mello into the kitchen, where his friend was just finishing up swiping the counter tops.

"Thanks." Matt sat down in one of the armchairs that he preferred instead of "proper" kitchen stools and let his body relax into it. His friend just shook his head at him, washed the cleaning rug in the sink and squeezed it dry with efficiency that Matt could only marvel at. Why did everything look so easy when Mello did it?

"Right, I'm done. Do you have any tea?" Not waiting for an answer, Mello started opening the cupboards and taking out various things. He probably knew the contents of the kitchen much better than Matt did anyway. The only things Matt ever used were the freezer and the microwave.

"I'm pretty sure I bought some… last week," he said nevertheless, looking dubiously at the array of paper bags that he couldn't truthfully ever remember having seen in his life.

"No, I bought these," Mello corrected and gave Matt a rueful look. "I tried to convince you that drinking tea was far healthier than lapping up whatever is in those soda bottles littering your living-room, remember?"

Matt blinked. He didn't remember. "Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh'," Mello snorted and started looking for clean cups. "I guess you didn't try that recipe I gave you the other day, either?"

Matt had to think for a moment before he managed to remember the small slip of paper Mello had scribbled on after an evening in the local pub, during which Matt admitted to not having eaten anything but frozen pizza for a fortnight. "Oh, right... That. I forgot. I was going to try it though," he quickly added, when Mello turned to him sporting his patented let's-lecture-Matty-about-the-importance-of-healthy-lifestyle look. "But I didn't know what all the ingredients were, and I forgot to check-"

"Wait, what do you mean you? They were the basic ingredients for a traditional pork and haricot bean casserole. Which ingredient could you possibly not have recognized?"

Matt swallowed reluctantly. He had a feeling he was about to be very embarrassed. "...Haricot beans."

Mello stared at him for a moment. Then he abruptly turned on his heels and began to fiddle with the tea supplies, clearly trying to suppress himself. Then, after a moment or two which Matt spent wondering why Mello didn't seem to be wearing any underwear under his tight jeans, "Matt, did your mom ever cook?"

Matt turned his thoughts to his mother, his artistic, lackadaisical mother, whose idea of bodily nourishment was sitting on the roof in the sun, naked as the day you were born. "Not really. She was into fasting," he shrugged.

Mello dropped the tea bags and turned to him, looking almost scandalized. "Fasting? Did she make you do it, too?"

Matt hurriedly backtracked. "No, it was just her. And we had a garden, you know," he added, somewhat illogically, "So we could always-"

"A garden that didn't have any haricot beans?" Mello interrupted, still looking scandalized and a little bit angry. Matt's childhood was a topic they dealt with almost a daily basis, as much as it wearied Matt himself. After all, Mello seemed to think Matt's mother had all but neglected his son, and his one mission in life was, apparently, to make Matt see exactly how much harm she had inflicted on him.

"I thought we were going to talk about my virginity," Matt pointed out, hoping, probably in vain, that Mello would back off, just this once. This was actually exactly the thing that had made him avoid Mello lately. He knew his friend meant well, but he couldn't help but feel like an utter failure, or worse, a freak, whenever Mello tried to "improve" his life and illustrate where Matt fell in his anthropological view of the world.

Mello seemed to be debating with himself. "Well... The two things are related," he decided.

Matt let his head fall to rest on his palm. "My mother is guilty for me being a virgin, too?"

"Well, I dare say she didn't exactly encourage you to form social contacts in your youth, now did she?"

Mello sat opposite Matt on the fuchsia-colored arm chair, sinking into its depths with a surprised 'oomph' followed by a roll of eyes. "God, Matty, you are probably the only person in the whole bloody England who has armchairs in his kitchen. Uh, where was I? Right. Let's talk about your virginity."

Matt sighed deeply, for the umpteenth time that evening, and lifted his jean-clad legs to rest on the edge of his chair so he could lean his chin on his knees. He supposed there was no avoiding this. But, he would only give Mello ten minutes and then he'd go and put on the TV. "Fine. Go on, then. Tell me how the science of anthropology will save my life. Please dissect my being and persona with your inhumanly sharp wit and cutting-edge analyses. Do show me how the error of my ways and place me in the intricate history of human cult-"

"Okay, okay, Matt, I got it." Mello raised his hands in surrender and his whole being seemed to deflate and soften with the gesture. There seemed to an unusual streak of bipolarity in him lately, now that Matt thought about it. One moment he was barging ahead like a steam engine and the next he was apologetic and repentant. "Sorry. Again. I know you're not a helpless idiot. I'd actually love it if you read a bit more so we could have real debates instead of these infuriatingly lopsided arguments. And I know that... I come off a bit strong sometimes, but I'm..." Mello paused to fiddle with some loose strands of string sticking out of the arm rest. "I'm actually worried about you."

Matt was glad his massively overgrown fringe was long enough to cover the slight heat rising to his cheeks. Mello was by nature almost embarrassingly forthright, but there were certain subjects he avoided like the plague - in addition to the ones he ignored out of respect for Matt. Mello's father was certainly one subject that was mentioned only in hushed whispers or drunken stupor. His more gentle, caring feelings for Matt were another. Matt coughed awkwardly. "Worried? Why?"

Mello looked at him with a feeble smile on his lips. "Well. How many friends do you have, besides me? And no, colleagues or online contacts don't count."

Matt didn't have to think about this one. "There's Naomi."

Mello was unimpressed, though. "Naomi as in Naomi your neighbour who gets drunk every Friday and staggers her way here to whine about her meaningless life and husband who's never home?"

"Yes, that Naomi and she does visit me sober as well."

"You mean when she needs money after she's wasted all the allowance her husband gives her on booze."

Matt couldn't argue with that. "Well, but- There's Mikami."

"The guy at Gamestop with whom you play with your Warhammer dolls?" Mello countered, his smile turning slightly pained.

"They're not dolls!" Matt corrected. "And that counts as being friends."

"Oh, yeah? Tell me one detail about his personal life."

Matt pictured Mikami, standing at the opposite end of the table they had their battles on, eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure when he won and burning with rage when he lost. Maybe Matt didn't really even want to know about his personal life. "Well. He likes… the new Batman films," he finally offered, with a sheepish smile.

"Matt, everyone likes the new Batman films. Anything else?" Mello sounded positively victorious now.

"Well, no, but so what? Guys don't talk about their personal lives to each other. Apart from you, that is. You're an exception to the rule. And since I have you, I don't even need any other friend like that. Oh, unless… Are you going somewhere? Is that what this is all about? Or, wait, is this your way of telling me you're getting married? Or, um, registered, since, uh, I guess Catholic gay people still can't get married..." Matt's trailed off uncomfortably. Why was it that on this particular evening they seemed to be hitting subjects that were downright cringe-worthy? He knew very well that Mello had an issue with the Catholic church not allowing, or as much as recognizing the possibility of, same-sex marriages or even love.

But Mello apparently decided to let it go. "No, I'm not getting married, Matt. Do you honestly think I wouldn't have mentioned a bit earlier if I'd found someone els- that is, someone that I would have, uh, deemed the man of my life?"

Matt crinkled his toes uncertainly. What was with all the stuttering? Mello never stuttered. "I guess you would have. But... What's going on, then?"

Mello stared somewhere just south of Matt's head. "Nothing in particular. I've just come to think that this present situation can't go on forever."

Now Matt was seriously worried. "Why, what's going to happen? Are you... sick?" He uttered the last word with some difficulty. He'd seen a TV documentary on AIDS the other day, and since Mello had had an awful lot of sexual contacts... And his friend did look kind of pale, now that he thought about it. Regret and guilt filled him like a tidal wave. He'd been so distracted by Mello's inquiries into his own life that it hadn't even occurred to him that something might be wrong with Mello.

But Mello dismissed the idea with an impatient hand gesture. "No, no, nothing like that." He slumped against his seat so hard that his carefully coiffed hair puffed up from the impact. "I just feel like we're stuck. Stuck in this situation, and it's because of you, really. I mean I really like you, Matt, in fact, I consider you my best friend, but this," he waved his hand between the two of them, "isn't working."

Matt swallowed at his friend's almost petulant words. "So… you're breaking up with me," he said, with an admirable attempt to make light of the situation. He couldn't believe this was happening. Mello had finally tired of him. Of course Matt had always known that he wasn't exactly the type of person Mello usually hung out with, but he had nevertheless lulled himself into believing that maybe Mello had decided to accept him the way he was. But, of course not. He should have known Mello would eventually move on when he realized Matt wasn't about to change.

To his horror, Matt could feel a slight tightening in his throat. He was just about to get up and excuse himself into the safety of the bathroom, when Mello suddenly leaned forward and captured both of Matt's hands in his. It was such a girly gesture that Matt almost flinched. Mello didn't seem to notice. "No. No. Shit, I seem to be saying all the wrong things tonight. It's actually almost the opposite, in a way. That is, I wish I could break up with you. "

Matt nodded slowly, the tightness in his throat dissipating, and tried to pull his hands back, but Mello was holding on to them too tightly. The contact made him nervous. Surely male friends never held hands? "So, I'm like an addiction that you only wish you could get rid of?"

Now Mello did let go of his hands, withdrawing them as quickly as he'd extended them. To Matt's confusion he looked like Matt had said something very embarrassing. In fact, Mello's tanned face had taken on a vaguely red complexion - Matt didn't dare call it a blush even in his head - and his left hand had risen to awkwardly fiddle with his hair.

"That's... Yeah. Kind of. Um." Mello was fidgeting. Yet another thing he never did."You know what, I have to go." He rose from the fluffy depths of the armchair, with ease Matt could only admire, but didn't make a move to actually leave. He just stood there looking at Matt, with a peculiar expression on his face, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"But you just got here," Matt said hesitantly and tightened his grip around his legs. He had an odd feeling Mello was about to do something rash.

Mello ignored his words. "Matt. I want to set you up with someone. A particular someone, in fact. Her name is-"

But this Matt wasn't going to go tolerate. His worried about Mello's health subsided in an instant as he felt a rush of adrenaline flow into his veins. Was this what this was all about? "Oh, no. Absolutely not." He got up to face his friend, albeit much less gracefully than Mello had, and crossed his arms on his chest. "That's not going to happen." Mello had tried to set him up with someone once earlier too, years ago, but Matt's reaction had been so horrified that Mello had never brought it up again since. And indeed, Matt had thought his friend had learned his lesson.

Mello frowned and tensed his shoulders, raising his hands to rest on his hips. Oddly, the gesture didn't look the least bit feminine on him. "Matt, her name is Halle, and I know you'll like her. She's, well, she's kind of like me, actually. And you like me, don't you?" He took a step forward as he spoke his last words, which made them seem like a threat.

But Matt wasn't about to back down on this. He was actually starting to feel more than a bit upset about Mello making him worry, when he was really just trying to introduce a new way of ruining Matt's perfectly organized life. "I don't see what that has to do with this. I don't want a girlfriend. I like my life the way it is. I like my bean bags, my arm chairs and my frozen pizzas, and, yeah, I even like you, even though I'm starting to question myself about that."

He paused to take a breath and see Mello's reaction. His friend was obviously not taking his words very well. He was taking deep breaths now, and Matt was afraid he was about to be closely acquainted with Mello's fist. How absurd, really. It wasn't like they were arguing about anything important. Mello just wanted to set him up with someone.

But no. No. It was more than that. Maybe Matt really was sick of Mello trying to fix his life. Maybe they should have done this much earlier. Maybe Matt really wanted Mello to shut up every once in a while and let Matt be the way he was. Even if getting Mello to understand this meant flying fists and Matt landing in the hospital when Mello lost control and forgot that, unlike him, Matt did not practice martial arts.

Matt's fears seemed to come true, when Mello abruptly moved his hands from his hips towards Matt. Although they didn't grab Matt's neck or even his shoulders. Instead, they landed on Matt's waist. Which seemed like a really weird place to put your hands on when you were about to kill someone, but then again, Matt was no expert on the matter. He looked up from his waist and the hands grabbing him to view Mello's face and was surprised to see that, rather than angry, his friend now just looked agitated. He was still breathing hard, and his face almost seemed to be… leaning towards Matt's.

"Mel-," Matt opened his mouth but wasn't given the chance to finish. Mello abruptly let go of his waist as if it burned him, turned on his heels and, quite simply, left. He did stop momentarily at the entrance to the kitchen to say, without turning to look at Matt, "I'm going to introduce you to Halle tomorrow", and then he was gone. Just like that.

Leaving Matt was standing in the middle of his kitchen, confused about Mello's overall bizarre behaviour, relieved that he was still intact and upset that Mello most evidently had no intention to respect his wishes as far as this 'Halle' was concerned.

**A/N:** Thank you so much for all the reviews. They made me incredibly happy and determined to continue this. I only wish my schedule wasn't so tight this month. *sigh*

I guess it's pretty clear what's going on with Mello, eh? Poor chap. Although, he is pretty annoying here, I think. I'm actually thinking of making the next chapter from his point of view. Until then~

**- Greenball**


	3. Chapter 3

Next morning Mello started his lunch break early, making his way three floors down to where Matt worked. It was barely 10.30 am, and most people were still busy bustling about, or pretending to bustle about, and no one paid attention to him apart from the usual appreciative looks directed mostly at his backside, of course. It was understandable, considering that Mello favoured tight-fitting trousers even with his work suits. It wasn't like was pimping himself, though. It was more like he saw no point in hiding his God-given gifts. What was the point in having an arse of a Greek statue if no one knew about it?

Nodding to himself, Mello situated himself in a nice little corner with a tub chair and a fake bamboo tree from behind which he had an excellent view to the person who occupied 90 % of his thoughts, every day. He hadn't actually done this in years, though. 'This' as in stalk Matt. It had mostly been his habit while he still hadn't properly met Matt. Mello settled comfortably against the back of the chair, looking for a good opening between the leaves, humming in satisfaction as his line of vision coincided with an auburn mop of hair. It was indeed probably the hair that had initially caught his eye that afternoon almost three years ago too. At the time Mello had still been the general errand boy for the senior workers of his department and had to run up and down the floors fulfilling menial tasks in order to "learn respect for his elders". Matt's department had one of the departments he had most often frequented. A smile made its way onto his lips as his thoughts began to drift. He could still remember it like yesterday. Matt had been ramming coins into a vending machine humming the Pokémon tune when Mello's eyes first landed on him, and the moment a small packet of M&M's had come out of the machine Mello had just known that he was seriously in danger of falling in love.

Mello hadn't made a move immediately, though. Oh, no. He'd been too worried that his instincts were wrong and that despite his quirky, lovable looks, the cute bloke was either a git, an idiot, or both. Which was why Mello had taken to sitting half an hour every day behind the fake bamboo tree from that day onwards, just to observe Matt, whose workstation was situated just next to the corridor. It hadn't been difficult to learn his name; in fact, it would have been rather difficult not to. People visited Matt like... well, like they visited a vending machine. Apparently, the skills of all the other computer nerds paled in comparison to Matt's judging by their tendency to ask his advice for everything and anything. Mello had been able to listen in on most of the conversations from where he was stationed, but he didn't know enough about computers to judge if the problems were real. Who knew, maybe people just enjoyed bothering Matt. After all, it wasn't just his colleagues, but all sorts of other people, even people from Mello's department, who saw it as their business to harass the redhead at all hours.

In any case, Mello had quickly come to the conclusion that Matt was, while obviously lazy and occasionally rude - he often played his web games even when his boss came to talk to him - he was also laid-back and good-natured and never talked down to anyone. But Mello had still found himself unable to make direct contact. Until of course, finally, fate had stepped in and led the two of them into the lift incident that had become one of Mello's most treasured memories. Which had led them to where they were now. Being friends. Good, good friends. Just friends.

For some reason, Matt looked oddly fetching today. (Well, in Mello's opinion he looked fetching every day.) He was wearing his oh-so-professional thin-wired glasses - he naturally couldn't wear his goggles at work - and a white-collar shirt with a ghastly, vomit green tie. At first glance he almost, _almost_, looked like your typical middle-class clerk with plans set on speedy promotions, annual holidays under the Caribbean sun, Friday night clubbing and Christmas bonuses. With some closer scrutiny, however, one might easily correct one's assumptions and decide that Matt was, on second thought, your typical asocial geek (in an unusually appealing package), what with all the silly miniature things and the framed picture of some game character decorating his worktop. And then, if you looked a little bit closer still, you noticed other things that made you think that, just maybe, Matt was a breed all of his own.

First of all, there was a small stuffed version of the cat in Postman Pat hanging on his modern workspace table lamp. Secondly, he had a pink, heart-shaped pillow to support his back on his office chair. The third and most important object on Matt's worktop by far in Mello's opinion, however, was the copy of Jane Eyre that had had him rubbing his eyes the first time he saw it. At first he thought maybe someone had forgotten it there or that it was a different book, possibly something dirty, hidden inside the unoffending dust jacket of a literary classic. To confirm the matter, he had snuck in for a peak one day while Matt into the bathroom. And indeed, it was a Jane Eyre. A worn Jane Eyre filled with messy little notes on the sides, in handwriting that Mello quickly determined as Matt's after careful comparison with writing on the Post-its framing his computer screen. There was no mistaking it. Matt was a cute, sweet-natured geek who liked children's TV shows and 19th century romances. Mello was officially a goner.

Which was quite unfair, really. He'd figured early on that Matt was what might be called a fairly gormless person, as smart as he seemed to be with certain things, but the extent of Matt's obliviousness had been nothing short of a cold shower as Mello got to know him better. For, to all appearances, Matt seemed to harbor no wishes of any kind for mature, romantic relationships, let alone sex, nor did he seemed to have the emotional range for such things anyway. To put it in other words, suggesting a relationship to Matt would be have been like asking out a five-year-old.

Granted, Matt had matured a lot since those days, especially when he'd moved out on his own and left his god-awful mother behind, but he still seemed blissfully ignorant of what occupied the lives and thoughts of 99% of everyone else on the planet. (Namely, sex.) Moreover, it had become increasingly clear to Mello that whomever Matt would end up having his (hopefully inevitable) first relationship with would have a snowball's chance in hell of making it last. And Mello had decided he was not going to be that person. Which was why he was bringing Halle into the picture. The woman would serve as a test dummy, a catalyst, that would, hopefully, wake Matt's dormant instincts and make him a man, so to speak.

"Mello? Matsuda said you wanted to meet me here?"

Ah, right on time.

"Hello, Halle, how are you?" Mello stood up to greet the blond woman, who towered over him by an annoying inch on her black stilettos.

"Skip the pleasantries and tell me why I'm here. I'm presuming this isn't work-related since we're meeting later today at a meeting anyway."

Mello gave her a charming smile. He knew Halle had a soft spot for him and today he was going to abuse that to the fullest. "Spot on, love. You're here to meet someone."

Halle looked blank for a moment, and then her fair face darkened as she took in Mello's suspicious grin. It wasn't, apparently, too hard to guess what his friend had planned for her. "You're setting me up. You're seriously set- Mello, what the hell? Do I look like I need someone to fix me company?"

Mello laughed. "Well, you don't _look_ like you need help. But! This isn't actually about you. Rather, you'd be doing me a favour." He fashioned a pleading look on his face, knowing it would look angelic on him.

"Right. Who is it? It better not be that L character you introduced me to the other day."

Mello bit the inside of his cheek. L was indeed bit of a "character". And setting him up with Halle might not be such a bad idea... "No, it's not him. He's someone a lot less… in your face. Going out with a gorgeous, confident woman like yourself would do him a world of good. And I'm sure you'll like him, anyway, once you give him a chance."

Halle observed him in a distrusting silence but Mello could see she wasn't that opposed to the idea. Maybe she actually in need of company. "Hmph. Fine. I'll go out with whatever loser it is you think needs cheering up," she finally agreed, hands smoothing down her chic, gray blazer.

"Careful, Hal. I like this guy."

"Alright, alright... Not a loser. So, where is he?"

Mello gestured for her to follow, and they walked over to Matt, who didn't notice them until they'd made it to his desk and Mello had coughed to announce their presence. Matt's face brightened when he lifted his eyes to see Mello but immediately turned suspicious as his eyes landed on Halle.

"Matt, I want you to meet Halle Lidner, from marketing."

The glare Matt now gave Mello was positively murderous.

Mello resisted a chuckle and continued, "Halle, this is Mail Jeevas, or Matt. He's one of our junior software engineers."

Halle stepped forward to extend her hand to Matt who reluctantly raised his to meet it. "How do you do."

Mello watched Matt's eyes flicker from Halle's elegant, white fingers to her ruby-red lips and couldn't help but feel an unexpectedly savage sting of jealousy in his gut, especially when Halle's smile turned from polite to genuine as she took in Matt's softfeatures and big blue eyes.

"So," Mello cleared his throat, "I was thinking you two could have dinner tonight." He didn't believe in small-talk.

Halle shrugged. "I'm not doing anything. You?" she asked Matt, who opened his mouth but wasn't quick enough.

"He's not doing anything," Mello declared authoritatively. "How about you guys meet in that nice small restaurant, Piccolo? It's right down Matt's street."

Matt puffed his cheeks and Halle smiled, clearly more than a little amused by the situation. "Sounds lovely. At eight?" She looked to Matt for confirmation, and the redhead nodded, extremely reluctantly.

Mello rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. He was suddenly extremely eager to whisk Halle away so he could talk to his friend alone. "Well, then. Now that that's settled, in an ever-so-brisk manner, I guess Matt and I better let you back to work, eh, Halle?"

Halle rolled her eyes. "All right, I'll go. I'll see you in the evening, Matt. We'll get to talk without our dear blond go-between."

Matt made an indistinct noise in his throat, and Mello draped his arm over Halle's back. "Come, I'll walk you to the lifts." He gave Matt a stare that said "I'll be back soon, don't go anywhere" and then began to lead the blonde woman away. Halle gave one last look and a smile at Matt over her shoulder and then surrendered to Mello's directing. Once they'd made it to the lifts, she shrugged off Mello's arm and turned to give him her opinion, at first making sure that Matt couldn't see them from his desk.

"He's cute. Not my type by a mile, but really cute. Although painfully obviously not too enthusiastic to go out with me. Is there something you're not telling me?"

Mello gave an unconcerned shrug. "What can I say, he's shy? In fact, I want you to take it easy on him tonight. No rubbing his ankles under the table or hands on his thigh."

A faint 'bling' announced the arrival of the lift as he spoke. Halle stepped inside, shaking her head incredulously and muttering something like "shy, my ass". "You'll owe me for this, Mello," she said aloud, breezily ignoring the three other people in the lift.

Mello gave her a slight wave as the metal doors slid shut on her face. "Bye, love, I'll give Matt your address so he can pick you up. You're going to love his car." His grin disappeared along with Halle though, and for a moment his face turned positively grim as he stared at the lift's control panel without really seeing it. He was beginning to have sudden second thoughts on this. He had chosen Halle out of all the women he knew mainly for three reasons. One, he knew without a doubt that Halle wouldn't be interested in Matt as a long-term partner. Two, Halle was self-assured and determinate enough to not be discouraged by the walls Matt tended to set up around his persona. Three, Halle and Mello were indeed alike in many ways, just like he'd said to Matt last evening, and, hopefully, setting up Matt with her would give Mello an indication of some sort as to whether he had any chances with his friend.

But. What if, against all Mello's predictions, Matt and Halle would really take a liking to each other? What if they... fell in love? What if Mello was de facto willingly giving away his chances to have a relationship with the man he had so irreversibly come to love? Indeed, if Matt fell for Halle, or someone else, would Mello simply step aside?_ Could_ he?

Sighing deeply, Mello turned and made his way back into the office space. Matt had not gone anywhere, although his body language was clearly signaling for Mello to back off. He was hunched over one of his many computers like a tortoise in its shell, hair covering most of his face, typing so quickly that Mello could barely see the movements of his fingers. He briefly wondered if this was Matt's way of having some sort of a panic attack. The man did have a tendency to withdraw into the supposedly wonderful world of machines and cyberspace whenever he felt… threatened.

"Matt."

Matt didn't stop typing.

"Matt, could you just look at me?"

No reaction.

"Matty... I'm sorry. I know you hate me right now, but-" Mello stopped when he realized he sounded exactly like a mother trying to coax her teenage son to talk to her. This was exactly what he'd promised himself he would stop doing. He did not want to become Matt's surrogate mother. His friend was already irritated at Mello's constant lectures and never-ending, if well-meaning, advise. Moreover, the chances of Matt ever wanting to date someone who acted like his mother were practically astronomical.

"Matt, for fuck's sakes, look at me. I refuse to believe that anything that wretched box of wires has to offer is as interesting as me. And don't even try to tell me you're working. Your work is hardly demanding enough to need your full attention. Honestly, it's not like you have to do anything that some undergraduate geek couldn't do in his sleep-"

Mello knew he had hit the bull in the eye when Matt turned to face him with a furious little frown on his soft features. Professional pride was something that even Matt, with all his devil-may-care attitude, had in abundance and over.

"I'll start taking degrading comments about what I do from you the day you can tell me what a software engineer even is. No, wait. The day you can tell me what a _software_ is."

Mello was unfazed. True enough, he might flounder a little if he actually had to explain what a software was, but he wasn't about to admit that. "If one were to go buy the looks of things, your job would seem mostly to consist of helping people find lost files," he said with a smirk. "That's all I've ever seen you do."

Matt's cheeks colored in righteous indignation. "For your information, Mello, we do have a separate tech support unit. It's not my fault it's made up of incompetent n00bs who have to come to me for help with every single failing hardware. It's also not my fault that the equally idiotic "laypeople" thus, understandably enough, feel like they can't trust said tech support and come directly to me, blatantly ignoring the sign above my head that says "analysis and testing" in big, bold letters. Also, you should know that-"

"All right, you can stop," Mello breathlessly interrupted and then carelessly continued, "You're just seriously turning me on now."

He froze. He might have even slapped a hand on his mouth if he hadn't considered it so utterly beneath him. Matt stared at him, blinking uncertainly, his indignation forgotten. "Turning you-..? What-"

Mello got his senses back and forced his lips into a lop-sided smile. "Yes, your adorable ranting is turning me on. Melting my insides into sizzling flames of desire. Positively scorching me."

Matt's eyes returned to their normal size. "Oh, ha ha. Do pick on the poor virgin." He rolled his chair to face the computer again. Mello slumped down to sit on Matt's desk and stared the back of his friend's head, feeling uncharacteristically out of control. He'd started having serious trouble keeping his hormones in check lately. Last night had, in fact, been the closest call so far. Matt had been only an inch away, and his wiry frame had felt so unexpectedly alive under Mello's fingers… And there was simply something exceedingly appealing about Matt when he was angry. It probably had something to do with how he was usually so blasé that any animation or colour on his slight frame and pale cheeks at all had the same effect as fireworks did on a dark night sky.

Mello coughed. "So, what do you think of Halle?"

Matt paused in his typing. "Let's just say that if she was from Venus, I'd be some creepy, mutated form of bacteria from Mars."

Mello scoffed. "Oh, please. She thinks you're cute."

Matt swiveled his chair around to give Mello a suffering look. "Oh, yeah? Does she know how I dress outside work? Does she know I've never dated anyone? That the only person I've ever kissed was my pedophilic babysitter?"

Mello raised his eyebrows. "Your pedophilic bab- Oh, never mind. No, Halle doesn't know how you normally dress, but it doesn't matter. She's not that shallow." Then he frowned in hesitation. "Although, maybe you should leave your goggles home…"

"I knew it!" Matt exclaimed throwing his arms in the air and rolled back to his computer. Mello resisted the temptation to haul him up from the annoying thing and shake all that ridiculous insecurity and maddening resistance out of him.

"You can go away, you know," Matt sniffed, as if sensing Mello's thoughts. "You don't have to badger me. I'll go out with Halle tonight, even if only to prove you wrong. I might even forgive you somewhere in the near future. Right now, though, I'd like tobe alone with my 'lost files', please."

Mello smiled and leaned forward for a quick hug from behind, pressing his nose lovingly against Matt's hair. "Thank you, Matt. You won't regret this. Who knows, maybe you won't even be a virgin next time we talk."

Matt just huffed and let his silence tell Mello what he thought the likelihoods of that were. And neither did Mello actually plan for Matt to lose his virginity to Halle just yet. According to Mello's philosophy, sex on the first date was never a good idea. Especially if you were a sexually inexperienced little gamer geek, who might in the worst case form some kind of silly, totally unwanted attachment to the first person he slept with. (Casual sex with a randomly encountered stranger in a club was another thing entirely, but since Matt hadn't warmed to that idea...)

Oh, well. Matt would go out with Halle, wake up to realize he was a (romantically) sexual being with needs and longings, hopefully not fall in love with _her_, and then be ripe for Mello's picking. What could possibly go wrong?

"Mello, please let go of me. People are staring."

"Ah. Sorry."

"Just go away."

**A/N: I finally have time to write! You won't have to wait a month for the next chapter, I promise.**

**I did struggle with this chapter, though. Mostly because I don't want to make Matt seem too childish or child-like, even in Mello's eyes, but also because of my English. I despair over it at times. :/**

**Oh, by the way. Am I supposed to be answering reviews? I'm not sure what the policy is here at . Ah, well. ****I love you all who're reading/reviewing/etc. ^_^**


	4. Chapter 4

To say that Matt was nervous would have been an atrocious understatement, practically an insult. His insides were in downright revolt. They were having a mutiny and making Matt walk the plank. Or, rather, _they_ were walking the plank, leaving Matt's body like rats left a sinking ship, lining up and pushing their way up Matt's throat. Matt was doing his best swallowing them down, though he was afraid the internal pressure might end up disembowelling him from inside out.

Mello had called him half an hour earlier, asking if Matt needed help getting ready or finding his way to Halle's flat. Matt, who had been getting ready for the past two hours already - mostly showering himself and "styling" his hair (read: cluelessly mussing it up with gel) - had said "no, and don't call me again". He was regretting it now. Why hadn't he at least asked for suggestions for first words? He should have asked that. If he had, maybe he wouldn't now be sitting in his car paralyzed to death. Maybe he would have already made his way to the intercom on the door of Halle's building to let her know he was here. Maybe he would standing there in front of the door with a stupid, awkward smile on his face rather than in his car with a nervous wince. He could see them from here, the little metal buzzer buttons with names of the inhabitants next to them, engraved on tiny metal plates.

Chic and neat and perfect like Halle herself. Like Mello. Not like Matt.

He was having hard time explaining himself what was causing this paralysis. He wasn't... shy. Not exactly, when he really thought about it. Nor was he intimidated by people like Halle, or Mello for that matter. He didn't even think they were in any way better than people like Matt, per se. It was more that he thought that the Halles and Mellos of this world inhabited an existence of their own, in a way: they were meant to mingle with _each other_, date and marry _each other_, have babies with _each other_. Basically, they were the elite caste of Sleeping Beauties of the world. The people who had fairy godmothers gathering by their cradles when they were babies, giving them things like self-confidence, taste and grace.

Self-confidence was the key attribute. Although it wasn't even an attribute in itself, because when you had it, you didn't pay attention to it or even know you had it. Whereas those who didn't have self-confidence were exceedingly aware that they did _not_ have it. People like Matt. They just-

A knock on the windshield made Matt jump in his seat. Heart thudding he peered out of the side window and was met with the sight of Halle's tall, sleek figure, dressed in a slinky blue dress. Swallowing, he rolled down the window and leaned out to give her a hesitant smile.

"Uh, hey. Am I- am I late?"

Halle shook her head, blond tresses swishing gently around her head, making that slow-motion _oshevushevay_ sound that hair makes in shampoo commercials. Definitely a Sleeping Beauty attribute. "No, you're actually half an hour early. I just thought that I might as well come down so you don't have to sit in your car for another half an hour."

Matt blushed crimson. "Oh, I was- I thought-"

"It's okay," Halle said with a slight smile. "I called the restaurant and they said we can have our table early."

Matt nodded. "Oh. Good. Uh, I guess we should get g-"

Halle didn't wait for him to finish. She walked around the front of the car and made her way onto the passenger seat. It occurred to Matt too late that he probably should have opened the door for her. For some reason he decided to say that aloud.

"Sorry, I should have opened the door for you."

Halle directed a surprised look at him. "Why, do I look disabled somehow?"

Matt opened and closed his mouth and then just started the car, not knowing what to think. He really, really should have asked Mello for those tips.

Oh, well. Now that Halle was actually here and they were moving, at least that paralyzing anxiety instantly felt less dire, largely thanks to his car. The familiar purr of the engine and the slight vibration of the steering wheel under his finger pads always had a calming effect on Matt. He was still piteously nervous, the feeling hadn't just magically disappeared, but at least he no longer felt like throwing up. Apparently his insides had decided to give their captain another chance.

III

Some three kilometres away, at a nearly-deserted downtown gym, one Mello Keehl was ferociously beating up a punching bag almost as big as him. He was mostly using his hands, even though he had originally come here to practice his kicks. L, his capoeira teacher, had cancelled that week's sessions due to an illness, however, and Mello had decided to pro tem revert to the sport of his adolescent days i.e. kickboxing. And man was it feeling good.

L probably wouldn't have approved. Capoeira, unlike kickboxing, was mostly based on extensive use of legs, which in L's opinion made it much more sophisticated than other forms of martial arts. Capoeira also wasn't about injuring your opponent and mostly focused on acrobatic play, whereas kickboxing, while basically a defensive sport, also essentially aimed at explosive contact and intense attacks.

But L wasn't here, and Mello felt like rebelling. He was feeling too jittery for the gracefulness capoeira required anyway. It was like he had all this excess energy burning his veins tonight, and he _needed_ to channel it into something brutal. L had in actual fact managed to almost completely convert him away from kickboxing during the past few years he'd been teaching him, but Mello still occasionally practiced his punches whenever he felt like letting out steam. Also, unlike capoeira, kickboxing came in handy if you had to defend yourself in a place with limited floor space, like, say, a night club filled with, say, homophobic thugs.

Indeed, kickboxing was exceedingly useful if you were lacking in size and thus a seemingly easy prey. Mello had actually once brought Matt, the ickle little thing, along with him to the gym with the intention of teaching his friend some basic defensive techniques (and, yes, also hoping for an excuse to put his hands on Matt's body), but the redhead hadn't caught Mello's enthusiasm. Instead he'd commented, after watching his friend practice for half an hour, that had Mello been born into different circumstances he would have probably become a gang member. Matt had said it only half-jokingly, and Mello could still remember how taken aback he'd been by the comment.

Oh, Matt. Why was it so hard to not think about him? Mello only seemed to manage that for fifteen minutes at a time. It was like being corrupted by some kind of twisted form of the 20 minute attention span syndrome.

Out of breath, sweat pouring down his back, Mello decided he was now too distracted for a good work-out, gave the punching bag one more vicious hit and then slumped down on the vinyl surface of the boxing ring with a satisfactory thud. What were they doing right now? Was Matt already there, perhaps a little early in his nervousness? No, that wasn't likely. Surely Matt would much more likely be horrendously late. Possibly he hadn't even made it out of his flat yet.

Poor Halle. And it was all Mello's fault really, since he'd arranged the date. He should do something, make sure that everything was going smoothly. ...Ring Matt again? When he had done that earlier the redhead had sounded edgy, though. It was in fact probably better to not annoy him any further for now.

Maybe ring Halle instead..?

III

"Mello was right, I _love_ your car. A... vintage Camaro, I think?"

Matt could count with the fingers of one hand the times he'd been as surprised as he was now. He stared at Halle in amazement, barely missing a lamppost that seemed to come from nowhere. "Yeah, second generation. I restored it myself." A second lamppost appeared in the way just as suddenly as the previous one, and he had to make a tight swerve to the left to avoid crashing into it.

"Eyes on the road, please," Halle chuckled, quickly securing her seatbelt. "Why so surprised? Never met a woman who has a thing for cars?"

Matt did turn his eyes back to the road, flushing a little. He was usually an excellent driver. "No. Not in person anyway."

"I see," Halle nodded. "Well, I'm not an active aficionado. I grew up with four brothers, out of whom two nowadays work in the car industry. Engineers, you know." She raised her left leg to dangle on the other as she spoke, and Matt noticed that she was wearing sandals with notably low heels. Was it because of him? He was, after all, at least an inch shorter than her.

"Really? Who do they work for?" he asked. If this hadn't been a date, this would have been intensely interesting. But as things were, he was only partly interested in hearing the answer and mostly just eager to stay on this safe topic for as long as possible.

"Well, Gerry works for General Motors and-" Her bag began to vibrate. "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I shut it down."

"No, it's okay," Matt said, relieved. "Go ahead."

Halle smiled and pulled out her phone, checking the name flashing on the screen. "Oh, it's Mello. Should I answer?"

Matt sighed. "You better. Otherwise he'll just ring me."

Halle cleared the throat and raised the phone to her ear. "Hello... Yes, Matt showed up, I'm actually in his car-... Yes, he looks perfectly clean to me-"

Matt gripped the steering wheel tighter. He couldn't believe this was happening.

"Well, he seems to be wearing a gray woollen shirt, with faint white stripes... Yes, glasses too-"

"Can I talk to him?" Matt interrupted, unable to take it any longer. Halle handed her the phone, shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Hopefully at Mello, Matt thought sourly as he balanced the phone on his shoulder, not wanting to let go of the wheel. "Mello, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Oh, hey, Matt." Mello had the gall to sound faintly surprised to hear Matt's voice. "How is it going so far?"

Matt resisted the urge to yell at his friend and tried to think of something pointed enough he could say with Halle listening in on the conversation. "Take a guess. My best friend is calling in on my date to see if I'm wearing clean underwear."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, only the quiet sound of breathing filling Matt's ear. Then Mello spoke again, this time in a completely different tone. "Matt. Matt, I'm sor- Shit, I say that too much. I really suck, don't I? I keep treating you like you're five and totally helpless. You hate that. I guess soon you'll hate me too."

"Whoa, wait a second. I don't, uh, hate you."

Halle gave him a questioning look, and Matt shrugged helplessly. The call was taking an unexpected turn.

"No, you'll definitely hate me. Because I just can't seem to stop annoying you. But it's only because I'm frustrated, you know?" Mello continued in a small voice.

"Frustrated how? Mello, have you been drinking?" Matt asked, biting his lip. He had hoped that all that weird angst the day before had been nothing but an anomaly in Mello's otherwise assertive temper, but apparently that had been too much to hope.

"No. I'm not drunk. Just exhausted. I cry easily when I'm tired," Mello sniffed. "I just finished a training session. And I'm not really crying anyway." Matt wasn't so sure. The only other time Matt had ever heard his friend actually _sniff_ was when he talked about his father. "I'm gonna go now," Mello continued. "Can I visit you tomorrow, though? It's Saturday tomorrow. We can play games or something. Talk about your date. 'Cause I'm your friend. I like you, Matt. I want to hear you talk about... things. I like you. Bye."

Matt blinked. There were so many things he could have, should have, said to that. But he never was good with words, and Halle was watching. So, he said "ok" and "I'll see you tomorrow" and "bye", and then he ended the call, feeling like the worst friend in the history of friendship as he did it. What the hell was going on with Mello? Again!

"Is he all right? He sounded a bit..." Halle hesitated, looking for a suitable word.

Matt handed her phone back to her and stared into the dim evening swishing by, crisscrossed by the lights of passing cars. "I think he'll be fine. He's like that at times." He didn't even know what he was saying. He felt odd. He felt like there was a code in Mello's words he should have been able to crack. "He's… emotional."

"I see. If you say so. I don't really know him as well as you do, I guess. He's hard to get close to."

Matt was silent. Was Mello hard to get close to? Maybe he was. Matt had never really attempted to get close to him. He never had to: Mello shared things willingly enough. And Matt felt close to him; he knew that, in theory, he too could tell Mello anything. In theory. In practice he never really did, though, did he? No, he didn't. Matt certainly didn't. But maybe it was because there was no need to? Mello seemed to read him well enough. And the details of Matt's warped mind weren't important anyway. It was enough that Mello knew that Matt had difficulty approaching people, he didn't have to know about Matt's more bizarre... tendencies.

Now really was not the time to worry about Mello, though. He was on a date! Mello and his mysterious ways could wait till tomorrow. ...And how dare he make Matt so worried when _he_ was the one in a situation of unprecedented stress!

With a petulant nod Matt let his car slide into a parking space with the enviable smoothness of a pro. "We're almost there," he announced to Halle. "Better leave my car here where it isn't that crowded. Piccolo is just down the street."

III

Mello stood in the middle of his bathroom, naked and wet, water evaporating from his skin in thick puffs of steam. He still felt miserable, almost an hour after that wretched phone call. What an abysmally wretched whim it had been. A whim. He was prone to those, whims. It was like some kind of a universal law that Mello just had to make decisions on impulse, on the spur of the fucking moment. It was a good thing when it came to his job, of course; quick decisions had practically made his career. But in personal relations they had been the first sparks leading to pointless arguments, cheating and break-ups more often than cared to think.

With a shuddering sigh Mello raised his hands to squeeze water out of his hair. He was getting cold standing here, but he didn't want to move. It suited his piteous mood too well, to stand here shivering and shaking. Self-pity, yet another fault of his. And to think that for some unfathomable reason Matt seemed to think he had no flaws-

Just a second.

Mello raised his head straight from the drooping tilt it had fallen to. What was this? What was with all this drama and third rate inner monologue? He was overreacting, that's what it was. He hadn't said anything that dreadful, had he? At most he'd been embarrassingly whiny. Pathetic. Wailing "I like you" like that. Yes, that had been pathetic. The entire phone call had been pathetic. Not to mention clingy. Mothering. But still no excuse for all this angst. No matter how frighteningly close he had come to _sobbing_ in Matt's ear.

Well. It wasn't often that he let himself feel this way. Only when he could think of no sensible way to discharge his feelings. And at those times it was altogether best to simply let one be overwhelmed by them, if only for a few moments. So, maybe he could afford to stand this piteousness for just a little while longer...

III

"You were really stuck for three hours? Three hours with Mello... That must have been-"

"Traumatic?" Matt supplied. "Yes, yes it was. Like being in a cage with a Tasmanian devil with an uncontrollable chocolate addiction. There are still dents on the lift doors after all that banging he did."

Halle laughed. She had a good laugh. Real and loud without being obnoxious. It was surreal that Halle was laughing to begin with. There was just something about making a beautiful woman laugh that was like honey to Matt's ego. And he hadn't even known he _had_ an ego.

They had been sitting at Piccolo for about forty-five minutes, not that Matt was counting. The beginning had been more or less excruciating. After the car door incident Matt had been unsure whether to open the door of the restaurant for Halle let alone draw a chair for her inside, and as a consequence it had somehow ended up being Halle who had opened the door for him and the waiter who had pulled the chair for her. _Then_ there'd been the problem with the wine list: it had certainly been a bad, bad idea to pretend he actually knew what "vintage" meant when it came to wines. Almost as bad as pretending he actually liked vegetables and then having to run into the men's room to thrown up the nasty little things called... asparagi? Something like that. Gradually, things had gotten better though. Actually, they had gotten better the moment they had started talking about Mello.

Halle shook her head, still chuckling. "Oh, Matt, I wish you were more my type, I could really fall for you." She put a hand on her mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that aloud."

Matt smiled weakly. So much for things finally going well. "It's fine. I know I'm not your type. I guess you're really not my type, either." What the hell was he saying? Of course she was his type. Whose type she wouldn't she be, surely? Well, maybe Matt's after all. He didn't think he was really attracted to her, in the end. She was too... fleshy and real. Real people in general just weren't that attractive. They had skin. And body hair. And odours. They might look fine and peachy on the outside, but underneath their clothes there was always all sorts of nasty stuff. It was such a shame really.

Halle was inspecting him with a clearly surprised look on her face. "Not your type? This is going to sound horribly arrogant, but that's a first. I'm all of a sudden almost tempted to show exactly how much your type I can be."

Matt couldn't make out if she was being serious and clasped his hands together under the table as he stammered, "Uh. You're too much. For me. That's why... you're not my type." It was almost true, too, as far as personality was concerned: she was fairly intimidating in her self-assuredness. Physically, though, Halle was actually probably the closest it got to anime characters in human beings, wasn't she? If she didn't move, she might almost pass for a doll with her porcelain skin and even features. In fact, out of all the people Matt had ever met only Mello could outdo her with his even more flawless skin and ridiculously trim body.

Halle looked thoughtful. "Well. I guess I understand. Men do seem to find me a bit intimidating. Which is probably why I tend to go for men who are clearly more powerful and richer than me but who in the end turn out to be arrogant, misogynistic shitheads, unfortunately enough."

Matt blinked at the bitterness in her voice, quickly pushing aside his creepy thoughts. He had absolutely no idea what to say to that. He was so humiliatingly clueless when it came to these matters. He never hung out in places where people performed their courtship rituals, nor did he really even know anyone who dated. His dad had left when he was very little, Naomi was married and mostly just complained about his husband never being home, and the closest thing to a relationship Mikami had ever had was an unhealthy obsession with some Japanese tennis star. And Mello... Well, as far Matt knew, Mello did have casual relations with people all the time, but he never talked about them. Which was actually rather odd. Perhaps he refrained from bragging out of consideration for Matt..?

Now that Matt thought about it, it was altogether quite odd that Mello didn't have a _regular_ boyfriend and hadn't had one at any point during the time Matt had known him. After all, Matt knew that Mello was a fervent supporter of monogamy and life-long partnership. Well, his friend had never actually _said_ so, not at any great length, Matt had simply gathered as much from little snippets of conversation and occasional tell-tale remarks.

"Penny for your thoughts," Halle softly interrupted his musings.

"Oh, I was thinking about Mello..." Shit. Wasn't it bad to confess thinking about someone else on a date, even if it wasn't even in a romantic way?

Halle sighed. "Ah. I guess it was too much to hope you were lost in the stunning depth of my eyes."

Matt was perplexed. If he wasn't Halle's type, why was she flirting with him? Or _was_ it even flirting? Maybe women like Halle just randomly said things like that to men.

Halle seemed to pick up his confusion. "I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I? Forgive me. Let's talk about something else? ...cars again?"

III

Mello had finally draped himself into a bathrobe and hauled himself into the bedroom to nestle on the bed. He still felt faintly...maudlin, but the emotion was fading. A promising sense of renewed fire was already creeping up his skin, making his limbs twitch in anticipation. It was a good feeling. He might be even be able to get up before his hair dried, which was very good, because he really needed to properly blow-dry and style it before going to bed. Then there'd be no need for it in the morning, and he could head straight to Matt's apartment for breakfast.

Oh, yeah. Breakfast with Matt. Hot chocolate and toast, pointless commentary on the shittiness of _This Morning_ and Holly Willoughby's cleavage, sprawling on those ridiculous bean bags... Yes, Mello wouldn't change that for anything in the world. Hopefully he wouldn't have to either.

III

"Do you want dessert?"

"No, I'm full. I rarely eat anything this late. You?"

"Uh, no. No, I'm good."

Matt wasn't going to sit there under Halle's cool eyes eating the banana ice cream he would have eaten had been here with Mello. Not even if it would delay the inevitable horror that was the Ride Back Home and Awkward Parting Words that would presumably end their date.

"Alright. I guess we'll go, then?"

"Yeah, let's. I'll, uh, get the check. ...Right?"

"If you insist." A conspiratorial grin. "...But we could also put it on Mello's account. He did set us up, didn't he?"

Blink. "Sounds good to me."

III

Mello wandered into the kitchen, this time clad in a t-shirt and boxers, and made his way to his Fully Automatic Coffee and Espresso Centre that Matt had gotten him last Christmas. Mello didn't in truth like coffee that much, but since Matt had bought it, the gadget held a special place in his heart. And it did act as a convenient replacement for a meaningful relationship when he was feeling really lonely. It even spoke, albeit in a creepy breathy voice that mostly reminded Mello of the heavy breathing of obscene phone calls.

"Mello, would you like milk in your tea? Milk contains significant amounts of saturated fat, protein and calcium as well as vitamin C."

Oh, yeah. The machine also knew him by name and recognized him by his footsteps. Matt had reprogrammed it like that, and Mello hadn't had the heart to tell him that, rather than sweet and inventive, it was mostly just fucking disturbing. Actually, most Matt's gifts were like that. Well-intending and imaginative but fell flat in some respect. He was, in fact, pretty much Mello's endearing equivalent of the classic batty aunt who sends you almanacs from year 1968 or stone-hard fruit cakes from even further back. It was alright though. It made Mello feel... special. After all, Matt didn't bother buying gifts for anyone else. Except of course for his sorry excuse of a mother.

"Please have some more milk in your coffee, Mello. A study has shown that for women desiring to have a child, those who consume full fat dairy products may slightly increase their fertility."

...Well. Special Mello might feel, but there also were times when he just didn't quite manage to appreciate Matt's fucked up sense of humour.

III

"So. Here we are." Was the relief in Matt's voice evident? Probably. Even though there really was little reason for it, since there still remained one little crucial part of their date, and even Matt had a pretty good idea what it was supposed to consist of… if things had gone well. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and made a great show of arranging the rearview mirror into a better position while waiting for Halle's leadership. It was so tragic that there seemed to be absolutely no one else out tonight filling the spring air with noise; the night was as silent as a tomb.

"Indeed we are. Want to come up for a drink or something?" Halle sounded perfectly relaxed, just like she had during the entire drive back.

"Uh..." Of course he didn't want to go up for a drink or 'something'. Now, how to say to that politely? "Uh, no." Shit. That was not polite. Matt turned to look at Halle with wide eyes, an excuse ready at his lips, but the woman was already opening the side door with an easy smile playing on her lips.

"Alright, I'm not much of a night person anyway," she said good-naturedly, placing her feet on the pavement. Then she paused and turned to inspect Matt with an indecipherable look on her face. It occurred to Matt that she actually reminded him of Ginger Rogers, his first major crush in life, and his heart jolted a little. How silly to notice that only now that their first and presumably only date was already at its end...

"Matt, I... I know I said you're not my type, but- Well, it's been a while since I've been out with anyone decent, and I do really like you. So. Would you perhaps like to go out again? That is, if I haven't offended you enough already?" She laughed a little, and the embarrassment transparent in her voice did wonders to the knot in Matt's stomach.

"Yeah, I'd like to," he acceded with slight nod, and Halle smiled radiantly.

"Lovely! Well, then. Ring me, yes?" She turned to get up, then suddenly turned back and smoothly leaned forward so that lips almost, almost touched Matt's. The redhead's heart almost gave up on him there and then, but somehow he managed not to recoil in terror and instead answered her glimmering gaze. Her eyelids made a subtle little flickering move, as if urging him on, and Matt, ever so obediently, not knowing what else to do, let his nose fall softly against hers, and then there was gentle pressure against his lips.

It only lasted a few seconds, and then she released Matt with a sigh and gracefully disembarked the Camaro. Before she closed the door she bowed down for one last look at his date. "Matt, just to be sure, when I say 'ring me', I mean 'ring me _tomorrow_', not some time next week, alright? I'm not the type of woman who sits by the phone waiting."

Matt nodded and the next moment she was already crossing the pavement and then disappearing into the building.

Letting out a shuddering Matt hadn't known he was withholding he started the car and let his body go on autopilot. As he drove along the empty streets home, he mused how he probably looked perfectly calm and collected on the outside. Inside, though, inside he was buzzing like an overburdened hard drive, obsessively processing all that had taken place during the evening, especially that kiss. His first kiss.

Except that... as Matt finally reached home some twenty minutes later he belatedly realized that he hadn't really been thinking of Halle and her soft lips. No, the uppermost thought governing his mind was Mello and how he would react tomorrow.

How... peculiar.

III

**A/N:** I'm sorry, peeps. My laptop died. Because I killed it... with Pepsi. I swear, I haven't cried so hard since I was five. My roommate actually thought someone from my family had died. Oh, well. I'm getting a new laptop for Christmas. Until then my updates are doomed to be rushed and random and shitty, like this chapter. *angst angst* *sob sob*

Btw, I've decided to start answering reviews from now on, since, apparently, that's what that all the cool people do (^^;). So, all you potential reviewers/critics, prepare yourselves! :D

Also, uh, about Halle. It's honestly not my intention to make her a serious contender for Mello, even though this chapter is totally making it seem so... She kinda started writing herself! And there are so few good female characters in Death note that perhaps... you'll forgive me?


	5. Chapter 5

By the time Matt's Camaro rolled into the private garage built right next to the early 19th century mansion block he lived in, troublesome thoughts had emerged in his head, like little drops of rain into the chlorine waters of a swimming pool. For the most part, though, the sweet taste of unexpected success still reigned: against all odds he had not utterly humiliated himself with Halle. Indeed, it seemed that he had made a mostly positive impression on the first woman, first person, he had ever gone out with. She had seemed interested, had laughed at his jokes, coined him "decent", and even if that wasn't the most uplifting compliment one could say to a man, it was apparently enough to make her want to see him again.

But, as much as the thought of it curiously tempted him, Matt didn't actually want to see her again. It wasn't personal; he'd liked Halle well enough. It boiled down to the fact that this just wasn't his life. As far as he was concerned, dating was what happened in movies and fanfiction. The dinner with Halle had been a foray by a stranger into a strange land, and now that his curiosity had been sated, he didn't really feel like visiting again anytime soon. And curiosity was what it surely must have been, what had made him yield to Mello's coercion with only the slightest show of resistance. What else could it have been? After all, he'd been mostly terrified to go, in the end. Meeting Halle at work hadn't been that bad – he'd been too irritated with Mello to care too much. The hours after work leading up to the date, however, had seen his nervousness skyrocket so that by the time he was sitting in his car outside Halle's apartment, he'd been horror-struck. Not even Mello's considerable willpower and charisma could have been enough to override it at that moment.

Matt stepped out of his car with a sigh, careful not to slam the door shut too hard. He didn't feel like crossing the yard and climbing up all the to the third floor; it was times like these that he truly wished he had a ground floor flat or at least that he lived in a modern tower block with a lift. He bid his Camaro goodbye with a loving glance and final gentle caress, and shuffled to the side-door where he came to a halt. The door had a reflective surface, which showed him that the gel he had used to pat down his hair before the date had seemingly evaporated into thin air, leaving behind what looked like a Witch's broom. Also, the artificial light of the garage lamps made his skin look sickly and yellow, his eyes glistened oddly behind the lenses of his glasses, as if he was about to cry or had allergies, and his face seemed somehow queer. Pasty and alien. The expression on his face was blank, and Matt was almost afraid to try and move his facial muscles in case it should make him look even weirder. Still, in the eyes of other people, he must look like everyone else. Tonight and every night. Just another human being.

And yet, Matt was a bit different from most. This much had been made clear to him by the so called normal people he had grown up amidst. He had seen it all, love, sex, relationships, children, all that jazz, happening to them, but had never felt the slightest inclination to take part in any of it. As time and years went on, most of his friends had moved further and further down the usual paths of life, many of them already had children, while Matt stayed the same he'd always been. By the time he got his first permanent good job, he had been all but completely alienated from his former friends. He still had a curious bunch of people he talked to face to face on occasion, but mostly his daily conversations took place on-line, where he was somewhat of an Internet celebrity. His various blogs and accounts had thousands of followers, even though none of them knew a single thing about Matt as a person, not that there was much to know, and he had never made an effort to learn about their personal lives.

Things had abruptly changed with the sudden over-abundance of Mello in his life, of course, but as eager as his friend was to share and gossip on the relationships and marriages of their co-workers or anyone he even remotely knew, Matt could muster only a passing interest in the things Mello seemed so invested in. He did attend to Mello's stories carefully and dutifully commented on them if he could think of something to say, but mostly out of obligation. Much like a childless single might listen to a close friend blabber on about their 2-year-old getting teeth, because that's just what you do. You pay attention to your friends and their lives.

Apparently Mello had finally deemed that it wasn't enough. He had tried setting Matt up with various people in the past, but never pushed it when Matt refused. This thing with Halle had been an unexpected move, and if the suddenness of it had been meant to forcibly thrust Matt into a well of self-reflection, Mello had succeeded. Matt couldn't remember the last time he had seriously entertained thoughts like the ones he was currently harbouring. It was like a thus far closed passageway had been opened, and it was beckoning Matt for a stroll inside. He could go on another date with Halle, and there'd be more talking and kissing, and then maybe there'd be another date still, and even if there wasn't, Mello would be more than eager to conjure up someone else for the purpose.

What a dreadful train of thought. In some weird instinctual way, Matt _was_ attracted to Halle, but he still didn't really want her - touch her, see her, possess her or her attention as a romantic partner in any way. Truly he did not. And yet he'd been happy to agree to another date! There was no doubt about it; he could still evoke that warm fuzzy feeling in his chest that had no rational counterpart in his mind. Was it an ego thing? A cultural construct of masculine ideals that even Matt in all his disinterest and 'abnormality' was unable to reject? Or worse yet, an even more imperative biological instinct?

Mello of course was adamant that Matt's 'reluctance' was but a contrivance he had unconsciously built to protect himself from expectations placed on young men (and women). That he was like those teenage girls who declared themselves asexual to escape the social stigma of having no sex life or relationships. Matt had never deluded himself that way, though; there'd been no need to. He knew he wasn't asexual, not necessarily even in the lower left-hand corner of Storms' Model. He had urges, which he also satisfied, mostly in the confines of his shower cubicle, on a regular basis. He concocted elaborate, raunchy fantasies starring himself and various characters of his favourite games and sometimes films. Indeed, he very much liked sex, in his imagination. Mello, of course, knew nothing about this, as Matt planned for it to stay, and thus the man's conjectures were inevitably flawed. …Was that something Matt should feel guilty about? Mello and guilt were already linked in his mind in one endless ouroboros, what with the endless lectures and attempts to 'improve' Matt's life. Sometimes he felt he was but one big failed pet project for his friend.

Matt stomped up the final flight of stairs and then down the hallway of his floor with uncharacteristic vigor in his steps until he was faced with the light-brown wood panels of the door leading to his flat. Tonight its well-built, sturdy demeanour irritated him, and he gave it a petulant kick. It clicked shut with an unsatisfactorily lazy click.

Wait. Matt hadn't even opened it yet. Moreover, he was certain he had closed it when he left. The contents of his bedroom alone were worth a small fortune and that in mind he had installed a special kind of lock on his door. It looked your usual Yale lock on the outside, but was in fact only a facsimile of one. In order to open the door one had to insert the left temple arm of his glasses that contained a microchip with the appropriate signature. Technically, this was stretching the housing rules a little: The building was part of a reservation area, which mostly meant that there were heavy restrictions as to what could be done to the outside, but the residents' committee had also decreed that any and all modernizations done on the inside should also be brought to the consideration of everyone else. Matt didn't give a shit. He liked security and had gone to appropriate lengths to provide it for himself, too.

Too bad it didn't seem to be working too well.

Eyes wide, all earlier musings blown out of his head, Matt took off his glasses, fumbling a little before finally folding them in to the correct position, and then silently slid the right temple arm into the slot. A faint buzz was heard. Matt stared at the lock in hesitation. Could his flat truly have been broken into? It had happened only once before when the FBI had made a surprise house-call after Matt had semi-accidentally hacked into a government database, and even then Matt's expertly configured alarm system had alerted him to it the moment it had happened. There had been no alarm this time.

It occurred to him that he should probably phone the police, or maybe alert a neighbour or at least Mello. But on the other hand he was loath to do that, maybe due to some almost superstitious belief that nothing ever happened to him of all people, anyway.

One deep intake of breath, then his fingers removed the key, and he pulled the door open, almost soundlessly.

It was dark inside, which made Matt's chest cringe unpleasantly. He never shut down the lights in his flat, not even at night, the well-being of Mother Earth be damned. He had a "slight" phobia of darkness, or rather of the multitudes of evil creatures supposedly inhabiting it, courtesy of his exceptionally evolved powers of imagination and fifteen years' worth of horror games and films. And oh was he was imagining it all now. Dark beings, monsters, malevolent entities. Things with no names and only the barest hint of physical form. It was sad, really, how pathetically enslaved he was by his own mind's eye. He hadn't been even able to play _Amnesia_ without having Mello camping out on the floor next to him in a sleeping-bag.

Speaking of Mello, it wasn't too late to call him. His very badass and skilled friend could be here in less than ten minutes on his exquisite Ducati 1098s that Matt himself had wired to illegal perfection. Happy to rescue his poor hapless friend and beat the lungs out of his intruders, assuming they had lungs. Happy to save the day and play superhero. Happy to be given an opportunity to demonstrate his endlessly infinite superiority, once again... It was far too easy to imagine the inevitable smug smile on his lips. 'The monsters again, Matty?' he'd say in that condescending way of his.

Matt stepped determinedly over the threshold, eyes immediately drawn to the only source of light, the television. It was muted and cascaded artificial white light in an eerie glow. It was a sight that sparked a pleasantly chilling memory from childhood. '_There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture... You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to...'_

"-The Outer Limits," Matt dutifully finished under his breath as he stepped further in, much calmer now. There was nothing like one's childhood when you needed a Happy Place. To think he had almost called Mello when most likely he had simply forgotten his usual security measures amidst his panic-ridden thoughts about the date. How stupid to -

Matt's breathing hitched. There was a figure sitting on one of the bean bags. He'd missed it at first and now that he did notice it, his heart dropped to his knees in terror. This could not be happening. He took a moment to steel himself and then stepped closer, leaving the door open for quick exit. It was a human being for sure, but... there was something off about it. The head was lolling to the side in an odd, unnatural angle and one limpid limb was hanging off the side, seemingly lifeless but simultaneously tense, as if ready to twitch to life any moment.

"Who are you?" Matt rasped into the darkness, surprising himself. Why wasn't he running down the stairs, sobbing in terror? That's what he had always imagined himself likely to do in such a terrifying if unlikely situation as this. There was a goddamn monster in his sitting-room!

The figure jerked in response, the limp hand indeed the first to come to life, the head awkwardly following it by rolling into an upward position, crunching in protest. Then it turned to regard Matt. And just like that, Matt was thrown in the middle of _The Ring_.

Her hair was a long tangled mess of inky black, the sickly white but distinctly Japanese facial features almost non-visible behind the long fringe, eyes only a pair of black coals amidst it all. The bony white fingers of her hands clawed the yellow fake leather of the beanbag like an eager bird of prey as she (or it?) hitched herself over to crawl onto the floor with hunched shoulders. It moved in jerky pulls, hands grasping at Matt's fluffy carpet, but only managed a few feet before it collapsed on its side in a defeated heap and… mewled.

Matt blinked. His eyes trailed from the now gurgling figure to the white screen. Just white noise, no more. "Hey, Naomi," he sighed, as the more reality-oriented part of his brain finally kicked in full force.

The crumbled figure, also known as Naomi Misora-Penber, made a choking sound in response. Matt benignly interpreted this as "Hello to you too, Matt".

"Come on, then, let's get you up, yeah?" Matt turned to shut the door with a deep sigh and then shuffled over to Naomi to lift her up by the elbows. The woman kept losing weight as days went by, and it was becoming increasingly easy for even such a muscle-challenged lightweight as Matt to move her about. It was sickening. While even normal-weight Japanese women tended to be light as feathers, Naomi was tiny even for her race. "Hold on tight now, I'll help you back in the chair."

"I'm sorry, Matt, I'm here again," Naomi mumbled once seated, unusually coherently for her drunken state, albeit in Japanese; alcohol always made her lose the tentative grasp she commanded over the English language. Her husband, Raye Penber, was American but spoke fluent Japanese and thus Naomi had never had any real need to properly learn his husband's mother tongue. Not until they'd moved from Tokyo to London anyway. While she had been an exchange student in the US and had subsequently used English in her job later, she had quickly forgotten the language once she'd got married, and it had taken her a while to relearn it. She still forgot all about it in times of distress.

Luckily, Japanese was the one language besides English that Matt excelled in. As far as he was concerned, it was the one language in the world truly worth learning, computer languages non-withstanding.

"I don't mind, Naomi-san, you know that. Although… this is the first time you've gotten into my apartment without me being here, you know. How did you do it? I thought I'd made it practically impossible."

Naomi hiccupped. "You should change the lock."

Matt sniffed, affronted. From Naomi's drunken babbling along the years he knew that before her marriage the woman had worked in some kind of government intelligence agency unit. The uneasy transition from a government agent to a housewife had evidently taken its toll on her, and it now seemed to be a guilty pleasure of hers to employ the skills of her former profession only whenever Ray wasn't around to disapprove. Still, how the hell had she opened that door? Matt eyed her defeated posture in dismay; there was no way he'd be getting answers now. …Oh well, he'd get it out of her once she was sober.

"So. Something particular happen this week? It's been a while since I've seen you this sloshed," he asked, went to close the door and then plopped himself into one of the bags as well. Man, he loved these things. Nothing was more comfortable. And the extra pleasure of seeing Mello's usually army-worthy posture crumble in the confines of one of these things was not to be belittled either.

Naomi made as if to shrug. "He has a new assignment. Very hush hush." She pressed her right finger daintily on her lips. "Won't talk about it. Comes home in the small hours."

Raye Penber also did some kind of intelligence agency work, as Naomi had accidentally informed him long ago. She was truly lucky Matt had no interest in exploiting her in any way; there was a lot a hacker of his caliber could have done with that piece of knowledge. "Oh. Must be tough on you… What've _you_ been up to then? I haven't seen you in the hallway."

Naomi made no answer, and Matt figured she was probably about to pass out. Perfect timing on Matt's side, then. While it had at first been exciting listening to her uncensored thoughts on her former line of work, she had quickly started repeating herself; Matt had heard most of her stories dozens of times. With a sigh, letting his thoughts wander and body turn to mush, he reached for the remote control lying on the floor and switched the static to the news to pass the time. He always made sure Naomi fell asleep before going to bed in case she tried to hurt herself in the sea of angst and self-loathing that mostly defined her drinking bouts.

In the mornings Naomi was without exception exceedingly embarrassed and usually gone before Matt woke up, leaving behind an apologetic post-it on the fridge. She was just one of those people who were a completely different person when drunk, Matt had come to think. Not unlike Mello, in fact, who tended to turn into a sobbing mess of Catholic angst while inebriated. Not that the man often drunk that much; he said he wanted to keep his mind clear in case he had to "save Matt from some trouble". Classic overprotective wanker behaviour.

There was a warm breath on Matt's ear interrupting his thoughts, and he started in shock as he realized that Naomi had somehow managed to crawl her way over to his chair and was now leaning against the bulging side of the beanbag, eyes gleaming drunkenly under the thick fringe. It occurred to Matt that he hadn't seen Naomi sober in ages. This pitiable state of inebriation had in fact come to stand for the woman's personality in his mind. What was she like, _really_ like? He couldn't quite recall.

"Naomi, what are you doing? I must warn you, if you pass out on the floor, I may not be able to get you back up again."

"I think it's him." Her voice was hushed, barely above a whisper. A spindly arm crawled its way up Matt's chest and onto his neck, where it raised goose bumps on his flesh.

"Who?" he forced out, self-consciously hunching his shoulders.

She spoke softly. "It's Raye's fault. That I don't get pregnant. But he won't go to tests. I think he doesn't really even want children. He asks me if I'd like a dog. I hate dogs."

"What about a cat then?" Matt suggested distractedly, discomfort clenching his stomach as her strange perfume smothered him further, but Naomi paid him no mind and pressed even closer, now lying almost on his chest. Matt had never been this close to Naomi or anyone else apart from his mother, really, and was finding the experience vastly unsettling.

"It has to be him. The doctor said. There's nothing wrong with me, and I haven't been on the pill since we got married..." She trailed off, staring fixedly into the collar of his shirt. Matt again twitched involuntarily and then placed his hands awkwardly on her shoulders, intent on pushing her back and regaining his personal space before tackling this topic of babies.

When Matt had first met Naomi, she had shattered many of his expectations as to what Japanese women were like. Yes, she'd been exceedingly polite and mostly soft-spoken, but also displayed startlingly strong-willed behaviour: Matt had once heard her screaming like a banshee at Raye about his late hours at work. And that had been _before_ Naomi had started abusing her weak tolerance for alcohol. It never ceased to amaze Matt how a woman like Naomi had ended up marrying a man like Raye Penber. A man of average looks, average habits and average opinions on everything.

"How can he," Naomi was saying resentfully, sounding less drunk by the minute. "How can he do this to me? The moment I agreed to marry him he started talking that I should quit work. Said he was afraid for my safety…. Said I would be so much happier at home with children and would never feel like I've given something up."

"Well, that's pretty-"

Naomi paid him no mind. "We've been married for three years with nothing to show for it… And he's a coward and scared to confront me. Drowns himself at work, Matt-kun..." Her bloodshot eyes slid fully open and focused in on Matt's face. "Would it be so wrong of me to do something about it?"

Alarm bells went off in Matt's head, but failed to elicit a reaction. He was too frozen in shock by what Naomi did next. She wrapped her arms around his upper torso and hauled him forward, wrestling him down and then all the way to the floor. In the next moment she had her lips on him, the slippery wet contact stunning him beyond words. Then her fingers were sliding under his new grey shirt, specifically bought for the date with Halle, and touched bare skin.

For a moment Matt's brain temporarily shut down. It was the timing, really. Had Naomi accosted him only a day before, Matt would have wrestled his way out of her grasp without a second thought and then called for her husband to pick her up. But this Friday, this particular Friday evening, his life taken a plunge into the deep end of life and it only seemed like a logical continuation to all the oddness that his beautiful, intoxicated neighbour was bringing it to a climax by making advances on him.

So, Matt let Naomi pin him to the floor like a ragdoll, take off his shirt, tug down his jeans and remove his socks. It was only when Naomi finally removed her own jeans and mounted his prone body with her white, naked thighs that it didn't feel quite so surreal anymore, and Matt became very aware of flesh touching other flesh. He squeezed his eyes shut, clutched the carpet and tried to think of England. It didn't work very well: His mother was Irish and his father Welsh, and despite having himself born at Oxford, he didn't feel particularly English. Right now he felt just discomfited beyond belief; the feel of Naomi's skin against his was making his very insides squirm in distaste.

Naomi was clearly very much of a different mind judging by the way she kept muttering "I want you, baby!" in broken English as she attempted to locate a passage into the inside of his briefs. Then Matt realized, with a panicked jolt in his brains, that rather than 'I want you, baby", she was actually feverishly chanting _'I want a baby!'_.

Oh no no no. This needed to stop. He sure as hell didn't want to be the father of Naomi's baby, and the sex part was feeling less nice by the second too. Luckily the woman had momentarily slid off his body to try and drag down his briefs so Matt had no trouble sitting up and seizing her by the wrists. She struggled a little as he pushed her back but soon gave up and let Matt remove her off of him. Then she started to sob silently, head bent to hide her face behind a curtain of hair.

Matt took a moment to breathe and then lightly placed her hands on the top of her thighs. "I'm sorry, I can't do this." How bizarre, the entire thing. Just bizarre. He didn't even feel violated in the least. Naomi hadn't been that forceful and he could have stopped her much earlier. Indeed, he was starting to feel slightly guilty himself. He ought to have stopped her immediately. "Come now, Naomi, don't cry. You should try and get some sleep. Or maybe you'd like some tea first? I have a large collection. Or maybe you'd like to talk? About Raye and babies?"

In the end Naomi fell asleep right there on the floor. Matt fetched her a blanket, and then retired himself, overcome by sudden sleepiness. The episode had effectively put an end to his soul-searching, for the moment anyway. He would look into it more in the morning.

III

Mello woke up much earlier than he had intended.

It was always difficult for him to wake up late; his childhood rhythm had stuck on too well. His father, a devoutly Catholic man, had made the entire household - Mello's mother, his two sisters, and the servants - gather for a prayer in the family chapel at the crack of dawn even on holidays. Afterwards Mello had usually helped the cook with the breakfast before school, which started at eight. He had kept up the habit of waking up early in his later years as well, first at Eton and then during his Oxford years, to get ahead in his studies, of course, but mostly out of habit.

And perhaps out of a kind of guilt as well. He had realized he was gay when he was twelve, truly been hit by the reality of it at uni and then, after a brief struggle to accept it, started to compensate for it, in a way, by living out the Catholic ways of his childhood to the dot.

"Good morning, Mr. Keehl. My internal track record shows your daily coffee intake has increased from 300 to 500 mg per day over the past week. Please consider reduction! Some studies have reported that increased caffeine consumption is associated with a modest, but statistically significant decrease in fertility," was the greeting of the coffee machine from Hell this morning.

"Shut it, Numpty, I'm not in the mood." Numpty was his latest name for the wretched thing. It was a Scottish word that he had learned from Matt. He wasn't quite sure of its meaning; he just liked the sound of it. The very first name for the gadget had actually been Matt, but that had only made him sad. If only Mello had Matt wishing him good morning in his kitchen every day.

He drank his coffee slowly and waited more or less patiently until 7.30 before springing to action. He decided to take the bus, as always when not in a hurry – he still found London exciting to look at despite having lived there for years now. The weather was perfect this morning, too.

He pressed the buzzer, and the familiar theme tune of Doctor Who echoed in the flat behind it. Mello had a key, of course, and Matt had told him he could come in whenever he wanted, but Mello still preferred to announce his presence before barging in. It actually depressed him a little that Matt apparently never did anything … "personal" that he didn't want people walking in on. Why didn't he ever masturbate in the lounge? Or at least walk around naked? Why, oh why, not?

The door opened with an energetic swing. To Mello's utmost surprise, Matt was not only up, he was also fully dressed and looked like he'd been that way for a while now. And it smelled like tea in the flat. Absolutely unheard of.

"Oh, 'morning, Mel, I didn't think you'd be here quite this early," Matt greeted him with an unsettlingly wide smile and stepped aside so Mello could come in. He stepped in cautiously, taking a quick cursory glance over the lounge but noticing nothing out of place.

"Couldn't sleep. Why the hell are you up so early?" he grunted suspiciously, his good mood dissipating. Matt often told him he resembled a cat that way; always resenting changes in the routine. And there was definitely something odd about the atmosphere, he could smell it. About Matt too. He turned to look at his friend, who was still smiling, hands in the pockets of his orange hoody, observing Mello like he knew something his friend didn't.

Mello affected a confused smile. "What's going on?"

Matt kept smiling too. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know. You look... taller somehow." Matt really did look taller, oddly enough. Taller and… manlier, almost. Was it the posture? The faint stubble on his cheeks? Mello definitely didn't want Matt growing a beard, oh no. Not on those sweet baby cheeks. "Did something happen last night?"

"Well…" Matt tapped his cheek thoughtfully. "Let's see. What is it now… Oh that's right, I almost had sex." He widened his eyes exaggeratedly, as if to say 'didn't see that one coming, did you?'.

Mello's heart stopped. "You- you did what?" Out of the corner of his eye he spied movement. A pair of white, naked legs moving languidly on the carpet behind the beanbags. It was enough to fill him with sudden rage that required no further elaboration. "That horny slut!"

Abandoning the alarmed Matt, Mello stomped over to the carpet, chest throbbing with righteous indignation and intent on beating the hell out of the lecherous woman he had entrusted his dearest friend with, but paused in surprise as the languid figure came into full view. What the hell? He took a moment to re-assess the situation. "Matt, why is your evidently hangover, very much married neighbour lying naked on your sitting-room floor?"

Matt shuffled forward to stand next to him, a strand of red hair taut over his knuckles as he absent-mindedly fiddled with it. "Well, she could've had my bed, but she refused to move. She was crying, see."

Mello swatted him on the head, unable and unwilling to contain himself in this moment of crisis. "You- Matt, why? What the fuck happened? What about Halle?"

Matt moved out of reach of the continuing series of slaps and gave him a look somewhere between bewilderment and hurt. "Calm down. The date was alright. I took her home at the end of it, and we kissed - well, she kissed me - and even agreed to go out again. Then I came home and Naomi was here waiting for me, and..."

"And?" Mello demanded.

"And she talked about Raye and about... babies. Which led to her wanting to have sex with me. Because Raye is apparently defective in that department. So she, uh, bounced on me. We didn't get that far, really. She took her clothes off and most of mine too, and then I stopped her." He saw Mello's rigid expression and misinterpreted it. "It's not like I encouraged her or- or wanted it, but she...caught me off guard. Although for a moment I thought about going through with it." He bit his lip guiltily.

Mello could take no more. It was just too much. "Oh for heavens' sake! At least tell me you were drunk? No, I take that back. Nothing good could come of you being drunk with an even more shitfaced Naomi."

Matt raised his hand to fiddle with the goggles round his neck, as if he hadn't quite heard Mello. "She's quite desperate for a baby, you know. And Raye isn't exactly meeting her half-way with this. It seems he's mostly avoiding her these days."

Mello's eyes bulged as his brain confirmed that, yes; it was indeed sympathy for Naomi he was hearing in Matt's voice. The stupid sod had almost been raped by this harpy and seemed to think nothing of it! Mello grabbed a handful of hair in both hands and pulled in frustration. Matt wisely chose to remain silent for the moment, eyeing him worriedly, and after a moment Mello let go, now much calmer. He was overreacting. Out of jealousy, most likely. Matt had said nothing had happened. Mello's plans were still intact. No unwanted conquest has been made on planet Matt. An easily demolishable colony, at most. "Alright. Move."

Matt eyed him distrustfully. "Why?"

"So I can get rid of her," Mello explained impatiently and demandingly shooed his friend to step aside.

Matt hesitated, glanced at Naomi's limp form under the blanket, dead to the world, and then back at the hard lines on his friend's face. Clearly he had misgivings about Mello's intentions. "Just let me wake her-"

Mello moved like lightning, securing his hands around Matt's waist and effortlessly lifted his friend out of the way. Then, ignoring Matt's protests, he gave Naomi's prone body a not-so-gentle nudge with his foot. The Japanese woman jolted awake instantly, bolting into a sitting position as if given an adrenaline shot, and Matt hurried to cover his eyes as the blanket slid down to reveal her bare, admittedly attractive breasts. Mello only narrowed his eyes and eyed her with palpable distaste. In all honesty, he had never liked Naomi: to him she was a spineless mess and a disgrace to her sex, who should have stood up to her husband ages ago. God knew she was capable of it; her former job description alone was testimony to that, surely.

"Good morning," he spit.

Naomi frowned groggily at the leather-clad legs before her, apparently not quite recognizing Mello, and fumbled up the blanket to cover her exposed chest. A laborious attempt to swallow was made and then she rasped, "What time is it?"

"I'll tell you what time it is. It is time you took a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and asked yourself what the hell you think you're doing attacking your unsuspecting, defenseless neighbour like some depraved cougar!"

Naomi frowned slowly. "Matt...? Did I -?"

"Did you get wasted and sexually harass your neighbour?" Mello completed impatiently. "Yep! I can't believe you w-"

The Doctor Who theme cut off his words. All three turned to stare at the door.

"Are you expecting anyone?" Mello asked after a moment.

Matt shook his head. "No one besides you."

The doorbell rang again, impatiently. Matt shrugged and went to open it. In the hallway stood Raye Penber in dress robes, hands crossed on his chest, frowning worriedly. "Good morning, Matt, is Naomi here again?"

Matt stared at him dumbly. Mello resisted the urge to facepalm. Naomi shrank inside her blanket and crouched closer to the floor. Apparently the guilt was putrid in the air since Raye impatiently pushed Matt out of the way and made his way inside. His eyes landed immediately on his wife cowering behind Mello's legs, then Mello himself, who glared back, and then shot to Matt, who could still only stare in mute shock, apparently having completely forgotten about the very existence of Naomi's husband.

"What the hell is going on here? Naomi, are you naked under that?" Penber demanded in his broad Mid-Western accent, face darkening as he took in the details of the scene.

Naomi made an indistinct sound in her throat and turned her face away, effectively confirming her husband's suspicions that something ignoble had taken place. Mello sighed deeply inside, pondering the least messy way out of this, but Penber was already turning to Matt, a menacing scowl settling on his face. "What have you done to my wife?" He was not the biggest man in size but clearly in good shape and thus equipped with a clear physical advantage over Matt, whose daily exercise consisted of a climb up the stairs of his building and an occasional Wii golf match.

Matt opened his mouth, to say what, Mello hadn't the faintest idea, but he had seen enough. An open confrontation could only end with Matt getting his face smashed in. "Oh, please," he started. "Matt hasn't done anything. He has been on a date and only came back just now. It's me you're wanting to talk to. I came to see Matt last night but found something equally… _delightful_ instead." He smirked lewdly.

Matt stared at him in shock, but Raye had luckily busied himself with investigating Mello from head to toe and didn't notice. The man looked suspicious but also wary. Mello smirked as he realized what he must be thinking. Mello was dressed in his weekend gear, which included his finest, impeccably tailored leather trousers, a tight black wife-beater and more bling bling than Lil Wayne. His shoulder-length hair was style within an inch of its life, his needlessly high-heeled boots had rhinestones all over them, and his fingernails were painted blue. In short, he couldn't have looked more gay had he tried.

But when you thought about it, as camp as Mello probably seemed to Penber, it was still a million times more likely that Naomi would fool around with him than with Matt. The short, geeky Matt whom the American wouldn't be able to imagine capable of seducing his wife. And of course he would never think his posh wife harassing anyone; the idiot probably stupidly assumed that Naomi was a victim here. It would be a delight setting him straight.

"And what exactly did you do to my wife?" Penber growled, shoulders tense, but still restraining himself from moving into a more physical offensive. It could be his professional principles telling him to get all the facts first, but Mello didn't feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt. Instead, he attributed it to cowardice; despite his obvious athletic prowess, Penber had the air of a penpusher.

It was Naomi who answered the man's question, having pulled herself to her feet. "What is it to you, Raye? You have never before asked me what I do at Matt's place," she intonated in her conscientious English and approached her husband, somehow self-contained even in her state of undress. Even Mello had to admit that she looked every bit the victim here. Pale skin, ragged ebony hair and dark, wet eyes – she could have been a film star in another life.

Penber breathed noisily though his nose but seemed to have no immediate comeback ready. Naomi gave him a moment, and then continued, "Raye, for your information, I haven't had sex with Mello. Or with anyone. We should stop to bother them and deal with this alone. Matt, I will come back for my clothes later." With that she pushed past her husband, pausing at the door to say Matt something neither Mello nor Penber could hear, and then exited the flat, bare feet making no sound on the floor. Her departure seemed to take the bravado out of Penber, and he made a move as if to follow her. But of course Mello just couldn't keep his mouth shut.

"Well, then, perhaps you ought to do as your wife would have it, for once."

The American turned back, "Don't think I'll let you get away with this. The moment I've dealt with my wife, I'll-" The man was practically shaking with rage. "I don't know what you've done, but it's clear to me you have taken advantage of a defenseless woman."

"_Defenseless?_" Mello spat, face contorting in appalled disbelief. "Trust me, if anyone's to blame here, it's your wife."

The American shook his head, neck muscles tense, nostrils flaring. "Are you trying to tell me she started it?"

Mello scoffed. "Well, how else do you suppose she ended up sexing up a gay man?

Penber now looked also confused besides furious. "Yeah, that's what I don't exactly get here. Aren't you after Jeevas? What the hell would you want from my wife, you goddamn circus freak!"

It was at this point that Matt, who had started spacing out of the conversation, snapped backed to the situation at hand just in time to see Mello flinch, cheeks burning as if slapped. The blond man's eyes flickered briefly to Matt and then locked back to his adversary, regaining their cool. "Ah, but you know, birds and blokes ain't that different from behind - an arsehole is an arsehole."

Matt blinked rapidly in disbelief - had Mello actually said what he thought he had? Judging by the way Penber seemed to be struggling for words, he had. In truth, Matt found it a little odd how Mello was so taking this to heart. In fact, the blond man hardly ever seemed to show his emotions like this. It often felt like, for one reason or the other, Mello actually kept putting on a show of some sort in front of his friend. The only time Matt had ever seen the man completely unaware of his surroundings or people around him was the one time he had gone to see his friend work out at the gym. It had been a curious experience.

"You- you- tried to- my wife-" Penber's face was getting purple. He had seemingly abandoned all thoughts of following his wife and was taking steps towards Mello in a decidedly menacing way.

Matt estimated that a fist fight was more than imminent and deemed it was time for him to step in. "Penber," he started, placing himself between the two other men, "Mello seriously hasn't done anything to or with Naomi. He's one hundred percent gay, you know that. He's just trying to rile you up, because he's a confrontational bastard and enjoys wreaking havoc on normal people's lives."

Mello made an indignant noise, but Matt ignored him and pressed on. "As to why Naomi ended up naked, I… Well. You know how she is when she's drinking." Penber probably didn't. "I actually think she could maybe use some help. You know, with her… addiction and all. She's been this way for a while now, hasn't she? She only ever comes here because she doesn't really know anyone else, you know. Unfortunately I was out last night, but Mello, uh, let her in and was perfectly civil towards her, I'm sure."

Matt was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the words seemed to come to him, for once. And they seemed to be having an effect on Penber, too. The man's shoulders were visibly sagging under the bathrobe, and his eyes steered away from Mello to rest somewhere on the carpet.

"Has something… like this happened before?" he asked with an effort.

Matt hurriedly shook his head. "No. Usually she just talks- uh, nothing coherent, really, just random things in Japanese, and then falls asleep."

Penber regarded him solemnly for a moment. "Right. I'm going to take your word for it. I have no reason not to trust you, I suppose." He stressed the word 'you, giving Mello a glare. "Anyway, I'll, uh, go now. To talk with my wife. You've been a good friend to Naomi, Matt. I'll make sure she won't come here anymore to bother you, I can assure you that."

Matt bit his tongue, not wanting to argue; he truly did hope Naomi and Penber came to an understanding, and Naomi would no longer feel the need to confide in Matt. So, he simply nodded in answer and moved to the door to shut it after the American, making sure through the peephole that Penber did indeed go back to his flat.

Mello cleared his throat. "Well then. Chances are you've gotten away with this like a boss. I didn't know you to be such a good liar."

Matt turned to look at his friend and nodded in relief. Penber had never come for his wife before. True, Naomi was usually gone much earlier, but her husband's appearance was still startling. Most of the time Matt only saw glimpses of the man, and even those brief encounters were always awkward; they didn't have much in common with each other.

"I suppose I did. No thanks to you, though. As much as I appreciate you trying to bail me out of trouble, you seriously went overboard with him, you know. And her, for that matter. Did Numpty not provide you with a cup of coffee this morning or something?"

Mello made a frustrated noise. "No, it's- I was just caught off guard. I hate surprises."

Matt nodded wisely. "So it's the cat thing?"

Mello rolled his eyes. "Sure, the cat thing. And I can't help disliking Naomi. She's always leeching off of you."

"She's lonely. She doesn't really know anyone here."

Mello made an indifferent gesture, signaling he was done with the subject, and turned towards Matt's kitchen, no doubt to witness with his own eyes the miracle that was tea made by Matt.

"Hey, Mello", Matt stopped him, a sudden quip dancing off his tongue, "why did you blush when Penber insinuated that you're after me?" Matt didn't know why he failed in making it sound like a joke. He opened his mouth to correct himself, but then he realized Mello had completely frozen in his spot. With a peculiar sense of foreboding, Matt let his mouth fall shut and waited. It took Mello almost five seconds to turn around and flash him a questioning smile. And he was blushing. "Mel, I think the time in which a believable excuse could have been given passed at least three seconds ago."

Mello's smile turned uncertain. He regarded Matt with a steady gaze, but his hands were clearly bunched into fists inside the pockets of his leather jacket. Then he gave a defeated shrug, an almost shy look softening his face. "I guess I've blown my cover."

Matt was going to need more than that. "You mean…?"

"Well. Penber was right, in a way. I do find you… well fit, is what kids say these days, I believe."

Matt blinked. "I'm sorry what? You mean you're like… attracted to me?"

Mello gave a slightly uneasy shrug. "Yeah. I'm sorry. What can I say, I'm only a man. A gay man. With a best friend who's... not too hard on the eyes."

The lightness of his words was in obvious contrast with the guarded look in his eyes, but Matt couldn't find the words to address it. Mostly he felt like gaping at this surprise revelation, but it didn't seem appropriate somehow. "Well, it's alright. Weird, but- uh. I guess you fancy a lot of people?"

Mello hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Yeah I suppose I do. I've fancied a lot of guys. And fucked most of them too." He laughed when Matt made a face. "It's not like me to act coy. If I see something I like, I go after it."

"You didn't go after me, though," Matt pointed out, now curious. To think that Mello found him attractive. "Even though you had me locked in an elevator the first time we met."

Mello made an amused noise and advanced into the kitchen, with Matt in his tow. He seemed relieved now that his friend was obviously taking this in his stride. "You'd have probably got an aneurysm if I had."

"Well, _yeah_, I'm almost having an aneurysm right now. I can't believe you have such an awful taste in men. I thought you'd be into blokes like Daniel Craig or… Aaron Ramsey."

"Aaron Ram- I can't believe you even know who Aaron Ramsey is!"

"Well, I wouldn't, but for the fact that he's the wallpaper on your phone. And how could I know what kind of people you shag, I've never seen any of them, now that you mention it. Or… have I? Have you done anyone at work?"

"That's for me to know and you to-"

"Oh no, not Aiber the Arsewipe, right? I'm not sure I could live with that."

"I don't even know who that is!"

"He's that blond hulky French guy with the Beckham hair and supposedly sexy stubble, which just makes him look like he spends most of his time licking the boss's arse, which I'm pretty sure he do-"

"And what in this description makes you think he might be someone I've slept with?"

"Well, let's see-"

And so from there on the conversation flowed more and more naturally and by the time they were seated in the arm chairs of Matt's kitchen and sipping cups of steaming Earl Grey, it was a Saturday like any other. For the most part anyway. This time it was Mello taking the brunt of most of the banter, and Matt playing the host. Naomi and her inconvenient husband were promptly ignored for the time being, and Halle only occasionally alluded to whenever Mello got the chance to badger Matt about the date. It was like the both of them had realized that for whatever reason this might the last time in a while they would have a chance to do this, with just the two of them, and that many things were about to change in their lives.

III

**A/N:** Oh the agony I've been through with this fic… About a year ago, when I finished the previous chapter, I ran into a wall with where I wanted to go with the story. I'm not a fan of straightforward romance (when it comes to my own writing, anyway), but on the other hand I felt ill-prepared to go through with the gravitas of my intended subject – this was, after all, supposed to be a comedy! And it still is; I think I've come up with a nice compromise. I've dropped certain themes and ideas, and consequently should be able to finish this thing in 15-20 chapters. Yay.

I'm really sorry I just disappeared. It's my modus operandi in life, I guess, to drop everything and flee without a word. (_ _)''


End file.
